Forgive me for this, but I am still rather new to close up. I recently saw two shows that both used the same effect and I am curious to learn the name and perhaps ditributor of the effect.

In both SHADE the movie and T.H.E.M the tv special, the performer displayed a bad hand of poker and by just flicking the corner of the spread out hand the cards changed to a royal flush.

This is a very visual effect and I would be interested in looking into having this for an upcoming production. Any help in finding the name, originator, distributor or publication it may have appeared in would be awesome.

I don't know where it fits in the picture, but I recently purchased "Royal Flash" by Mark Mason, which is close to the Shade idea (four jacks and a 10 become a royal flush, at which point you can cleanly show each card; the jacks are shown front and back before the change).

The following was published in the 'New Apparatus - May 1981' newsletter issued by Busby-Corin, Inc. (San Francisco):

VISIBLE POKER HAND CHANGE - Robert Koch

Inferior versions of Bob's original effect have hit the market recently. We are proud to sell the only genuine and authorized version of this very startling effect. The effect was originally outlined, very briefly, in Ed Marlo's ED MARLO ON THE ACROBATIC CARD in 1967, and was credited to Bob Koch - something which all of the rip-off versions have failed to do.

Tom Ransom originally published the work for the needle through balloon in the New Phoenix. Not sure of the date of any other potential inventor but would love to know.

As for the poker change, I misremembered remarks of the late P. Howard Lyons that he shared with me when I experimented with the set of cards sold by Busby. Tom Ransom, it turns out, had an improvement (with no disrepect to any of the other people who have worked on this trick)on the Koch handling. Tommy altered the cut on the flap, outjogging it a hairline to the left, so that he could deal the cards from the deck pursuant to a regular round of poker and then scoop up the hand of cards, setting the gimmicks in the appropriate manner but with greater ease. This, as I just mentioned, allowed him to deal individual cards and pick up the hand rather than removing the set hand as a unit.

Tom said that he used to make these sets up in the early 70s and sell them. Most were sold at the early F.F.F.F.'s that he used to attend.